25 January 2010

Water lawyer bleg

A loyal reader asks:

Do you know a lawyer in property rights and takings who might be inclined to write about how owning shares of water might become a more effective guard than regulation against pollution because of lawsuit threats to proptect value of water property?

5 comments:

Seems like they are suggesting that ownership of water would enable owners to bring trespass suits against polluters. Interesting idea to explore but are there really advantages to having private individuals bring suit against the polluter vs. government, as representative of the public, bringing suit to protect a public resource? Sure you have captive agency problems. But I think it would be less difficult to buy off individual property owners - hmmm, is this Coase-ian bargaining at work. Might it then achieve the optimal level of pollution? And would all owners of the resource be content with this solution?